36. after Joseph Mallord William Turner (1775-1851) etched and mezzotinted by Frank Short (1857-1945)A Scene in the Campagna

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A Scene in the Campagna

Etching and mezzotint, 1886, 215 x 289 mm., Hardie 4 ii/ii. Fine impression in brown on very thick wove paper with full margins, signed in pencil by Short. During his life, Turner assiduously supervised the production of mezzotints after his drawings and watercolors to be collected in a series called the Liber Studiorum. His ultimate aim was a set of one hundred images to exemplify different types of landscape, as well as to make his work available to a larger public. The set was incomplete at his death and years later, Sir Frank Short essayed to complete it, working from unfinished trial proofs as well as from the original drawings. Short’s work was praised by John Ruskin, as well as many others, and may certainly be said to match the best of the work done under Turner’s direct supervision.